


We'll Stay Young Forever

by InSpiteOfAllTheHeartaches



Series: A Small Life [4]
Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Canon Era (sort of), F/M, Family, Fluff, Literary References & Allusions, No Plot/Plotless, Oldsies, Romance, literally just fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 06:01:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29994960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InSpiteOfAllTheHeartaches/pseuds/InSpiteOfAllTheHeartaches
Summary: Summer, 1961: Jack and Katherine take their great-grandchildren to the park and reflect on what it means to be young. Part of the A Small Life series.
Relationships: Jack Kelly/Katherine Plumber Pulitzer
Series: A Small Life [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2119809
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	We'll Stay Young Forever

A crumpled-up newspaper skitters across the grass, skipping and twirling in the fresh breeze of late summer. Beyond it, the children follow suit, laughing and calling out and rolling on the grass. Every so often, Jack or Katherine will glance up, just to run their eyes over them and check that they’re okay. Katherine looks more regularly. She’s lost one child before; she won’t lose another. Especially not when they’ve done so well, the lot of them, to make it through two world wars and a couple of epidemics without losing anybody. Jack notices, reaches out his hand to rest it on her knee, rubbing soothing circles there even as his left hand continues to trace lines across the page of his sketchbook. To think there was a time when such a touch would have been inappropriate in a public park. It’s almost unfathomable now, in these days when the women walking by have skirts with hems halfway up their thighs and the boys go about in t-shirts and denim jeans.

She’s grateful for it, the weight of his hand there. Even though it’s the third generation, their children’s children’s children, she still can’t quite shake the worry of it. Jack, however, as always, is there to soothe it.

“What you readin’?” He asks, the next time she sneaks a glance at where the children are chasing one another around the pond.

“Dorian Gray.” She replies, turning the cover toward him and pointing. “The copy you gave me right over there.”

“Whew.” Jack whistles under his breath, following the line of her finger to a tree just across the path. “‘S a while back, ain’t it?”

They’d sat under that tree, once, young and engaged and with no clue of what was in store for them; their faces smooth and unwrinkled, bodies lithe and beautiful. Yet, Katherine finds that she wouldn’t change one moment of the sixty-one years that have passed since then. Sure, they can’t sit leaning against that tree for hours now, it would break both their aching backs and they might never manage to get on their feet again. But she’s content, sitting on this bench, the roar of the motorcycle engines and the sounding of car horns sifting through the trees to settle on the ground like the icing sugar on Katherine’s recent birthday cake. Eighty. It feels terribly strange to be so old.

“More than sixty years, I should think.”

“An’ I still think that book’s disturbin’.”

Katherine hums in response. That tree will lose its leaves soon, will paint the grass beneath in burnt orange and auburn and burnished gold like something out of one of Jack’s paintings. They will be the kind of leaves that her and Lucy crunched through as children, delighting in the rustle of them beneath their boots. Her great-grandchildren will do the same this autumn. Some things never change.

“I thought we’d stay young forever, once.” She says, almost to herself.

Jack wrinkles his nose, taking off his cap to run a hand through his hair, now grey instead of deep brown. “We ain’t old.”

“We’re _so_ old.” She laughs, turning to look at him. At this particular moment, she doesn’t truly feel it.

“Speak for yourself.” Jack grins back at her.

“You’re older than me, Mr. Kelly!”

“ _That_ ,” he points at her, “is a technicality. I’s young at heart.”

She twists her lips to suppress a smile and pats his arm in faux-commiseration. “I think it’s called immaturity, my love.”

Jack opens his mouth to retort, but is interrupted by the oldest of the children, Emma, sprinting up to them, closely followed by her two cousins.

“Grandpa! There’s an ice cream stall!”

“Is there?” Jack widens his eyes to an almost comic degree, reaching inside his suit jacket and taking hold of his wallet. “Well then.”

“Jack,” Katherine clucks her tongue, resisting the urge to roll her eyes, “they’ll spoil their lunch.”

Jack pays his wife no mind, fishing inside his wallet and leaning forward to whisper to Emma as he hands a crisp bill to her. “Don’ tell your Grandma, okay?”

“I’m _right here_.”

“I’s in trouble again.” Jack pulls a face of mock nervousness at his great-granddaughter. “Get her a strawberry one wi’ sprinkles, okay? Then she might forgive me.”

Katherine wonders if, at this stage, there is anything about her that Jack doesn’t know. Sixty-two years. They’ve spent more years together than most people get to have in their entire lives. And the way Jack’s treated those sixty-two years, it’s like he thinks there’s going to be some sort of exam at the pearly gates with the set topic of Katherine Kelly. He knows the first chapter of her favourite book off by heart and the way she likes him to trace his fingers over the constellation of freckles on her right shoulder and that her favourite ice cream is strawberry with sprinkles.

“Please can I get sprinkles too?” Emma asks, eyes wide. Behind her, her cousins congregate, holding their collective breath in anticipation for the pronouncement of whether or not they will get ice cream.

Katherine doesn’t know why they bother, at this point. They’ve asked Jack, for goodness sake, and he is incapable of saying no. Age has mellowed him somewhat, though he’s still very much the same cheeky boy she married. It’s just that with grandchildren, and now these great-grandchildren, he can afford to be more lenient. He’s gained a reputation among them for indulgence, being permanently in possession of a large bag of sweets and willing to join in on any game. Katherine on the other hand, is stricter. She does not want to send them home to their parents on a sugar high. That said, the second any one of them gets a scraped knee or a bump on the head, they don’t cry out for mommy or daddy, but for grandma.

“You can get whatever you wants, kid.”

“You’re too soft.” Katherine says, nudging him with her shoulder as little Emma sprints off, money clutched tightly in her little fist, closely pursued by her cousins.

“I jus’ want them to be able to eat the way I couldn’t.” Jack shrugs, and Katherine never knows quite what to say when he says things like that. He’s not being manipulative with it, she knows, it’s just Jack’s way. He’s honest, at least with her. “‘Sides, we both know you’d have given in jus’ as soon as the puppy eyes started.”

“Would not.” Katherine sticks her chin in the air.

“Would too.”

She glares at him. In response, Jack lets the corners of his mouth droop and widens his eyes into a frankly adorable puppy-eyed stare. He’s eighty-one. How on earth does she still think that he’s the most attractive man on the planet?

“Fine.” She concedes, looking away as Emma bounds over to present her with an appropriately sprinkled ice cream. “Thank you, sweetie.”

Jack plasters on a mock frown and elbows his wife. “What you thankin’ her for? I paid for it.”

“And Emma went and collected it;” Katherine smirks at Jack, then turns to grin at Emma as she tells him, “you want a thank you, you have to get up and work for it.”

“She’s bullyin’ me, Emma.” Jack appeals to the little girl stood in front of their bench, pouting a little bit. She giggles, then holds out the ice cream in her hand.

“You want a lick of my ice cream, Grandpa?”

Katherine sees something flicker across Jack’s face, a glimmer of the teenager that she met more than half a century ago who didn’t want to eat if others hadn’t already had their fill. The street rat side of him has never really gone away and she sees it, sometimes, hiding in the corners of his eyes, the remnants of hunger and worry. And she loves him for it, because how strong and good her husband is that he has overcome so much. That they’ve overcome so much. Together.

“I ain’t robbin’ you?” Jack frowns at the little girl.

“Nah! It’s chocolate.” She says, thrusting it towards him. Jack nods, takes it from her hand, has a lick, then passes it back, wiping his mouth with the cuff of his sleeve. That’s another thing that he’s never lost – a habit that still infuriates Katherine. That said, she always forgets to clean her hair out of the plughole in the sink, so she figures they’re probably about even. “That is good, kid, you go enjoy it, huh?”

Emma skips off to join her cousins and Jack turns to his wife, biting back a smile. “See, nice girls share their ice creams.”

“Hm,” she smiles, leaning over and brushing a kiss across his lips, “thank you.”

“Strawberry’s a good flavour on you.” Jack grins as she pulls away from him – because he’s delicious, but her ice cream is even more so. Katherine feels her cheeks flare at the comment and, honestly, who gave him the right to still be able to fluster her? “Tell me ‘bout what you’s writin’ at the minute.”

“Jack, you’ve listened to me talk about my writing for sixty-two years. Aren’t you bored yet?”

“Of you? Never.” He leans over and plants a kiss on her cheek where the laughter lines of their time together wind their way across her skin. “Y’make me feel seventeen again.”


End file.
